t very democracy which, in this part, our Constitution
was formed to avoid.

It is no excuse at all for a minister who at our desire takes a measure
contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the
hand of suicide is guilty of murder. On our part, I say, that to be
instructed is not to be degraded or enslaved. Information is an
advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it. He that is bound to
act in the dark cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to
our governors that our desires and our interests are at variance, they
ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter. Statesmen
are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we
can possibly command. They have a whole before them, which we can
contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary
relations. Ministers are not only our natural rulers, but our natural
guides. Reason, clearly and manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty
force; but reason in the mouth of legal authority is, I may fairly say,
irresistible.

I admit that reason of state will not, in many circumstances, permit the
disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that case
silence is manly, and it is wise. It is fair to call for trust, when the
principle of reason itself suspends its public use. I take the
distinction to be this: the ground of a particular measure making a part
of a plan it is rarely proper to divulge; all the broader grounds of
policy, on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to
be concealed. They who have not the whole cause before them, call them
politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges.
The difficulties of the case, as well as its fair side, ought to be
presented. This ought to be done; and it is all that can be done. When
we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we
resolve, with a blind and headlong violence, to resist the admonitions
of our friends, and to cast ourselves into the hands of our potent and
irreconcilable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand
acquitted before God and man for whatever may come.

Lamenting, as I do, that the matter has not had so full and free a
discussion as it requires, I mean to omit none of the points which seem
to me necessary for consideration, previous to an arrangement which is
forever to decide the form and the fate of Europe. In the course,
therefore, of what